


The Interviews of Mr. Koudelka

by Leidolette



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Investigations, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 12:36:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11185266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/pseuds/Leidolette
Summary: Twelve years after the fact, Koudelka finds out what really happened to Renée.





	1. Prologue: The News

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Interviews of Mr Koudelka (Podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11183259) by [Trashbaphomet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trashbaphomet/pseuds/Trashbaphomet). 



> Hey, Happy Wolf 359 Big Bang 2017! So happy to write for this fest, so glad to be paired with a fantastic podficcer (!!!). and so excited for the last season of Wolf 359!
> 
> Here is the accompanying podfic, read by Trashbaphomet:
> 
>  
> 
> <http://archiveofourown.org/works/11183259>

"...Crowds at Cape Canaveral hoping to catch a glimpse of an interstellar craft today were horrified to hear reports that Mission Control had lost contact with the returning _Hephaestus_ crew somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. Early reports are now indicating the possibility of an explosion resulting from a malfunction in the coolant system..."

* * *

"...Investigators have discovered floating debris about 60 miles off the West coast of Mexico this morning that may have been part of the spacecraft containing the former _Hephaestus_ crew returning from dwarf star Wolf 359 on a deep space research mission..."

* * *

"...Full military honors will be given to Commander Renée Minkowski and Officer Douglas Eiffel. Goddard Industries has relayed the wishes of the family of Doctor Alexander Hilbert, who have opted in favor of a limited service, and burial in a private family plot..."

* * *

"...Five years after the shuttlecraft disaster that claimed the lives of all three crew members on board, Goddard Futuristics has announced plans to indefinitely suspend operations in the company's aeronautics development and exploration departments. When reached for comment, Rachel Young, new CEO of Goddard Futuristics, said... '


	2. The Pull, the Pain, and Bone Weary

All it took for the course of Koudelka's life to be utterly changed was a chance meeting at the grocery store as his unwieldy cart clipped the wheel of another.

"Excuse me, sorry about that," Koudelka said to the woman automatically, already moving on.

"Dominic?" the stranger replied.

Koudelka did a double take. The stranger was, in fact, Julia, who'd been his receptionist for eleven years, and had now been retired for six. "Julia!" Koudelka said, smiling wide.

All required hugging and laughing between old friends after a long separation was done right there in the aisle in front of the cilantro. Julia was in town for a funeral, it turned out. Someone Koudelka had never met, but one of Julia's dearest friends.

"I'm so sorry to hear that," said Koudelka earnestly.

"I know, I know. And it wasn't a surprise -- she was sick for a long time. It just... is very hard." The beginnings of tears welled up at the corner of her eyes, but she blinked them away.

Koudelka squeezed her hand. "Oh, Julia."

Julia squeezed back. "Of course, you know how bad it can be, better than most people, I think." She'd been a good friend to him in the aftermath of Renée's death.

"It's just that there's some family squabbling involved here, and people can be so cruel," Julia continued. "Especially when someone is hurting. There's a kind of person that can sense it, and want to cause more pain." She sighed, and absently stared at the items in her cart. "I didn't tell you this at the time, but someone called the office pretending to be your wife."

Koudelka started. Of all the things he had expected Julia to say. "What? When?"

"About a year after she died. You were in a meeting and there was a call from an unknown number. When I picked up, a woman claiming to be your wife asked for you. Whoever it was had done their homework -- she sounded so much like Renée." Julia's gaze voice trailed off, then, "So cruel," she repeated.

Koudelka said nothing.

Julia seemed to come back to herself, and her eyes flicked over to Koudelka's face. "I'm sorry," she said, with half a watery laugh, "it was the damn funeral. I can hardly keep ahold of myself today."

Koudelka said his goodbyes -- and his mind started ticking.

\-----

He'd gotten out of investigative reporting years ago. Koudelka no longer had the energy, or the interest, to pursue stories to their bitter end. So many of his old plans and desires had been doused like a fire when Renée had died, and his passion for reporting had been one of them.

He'd moved more heavily into the policy side of political reporting. Most of his time was spent breaking down the finer points of legislation pending in the House and the Senate for political publications. It was steady work -- important, and interesting in its own way. But no longer was he chasing stories across international borders, or through the twisted mazes in the hearts of powerful men.

But he could feel all those old investigative muscles at work again now. Creaky and weak, but they were there.

As silly as it was, Lois Lane had been his inspiration growing up. She was the impetus for his early interest in investigative reporting. Despite her fictional status, and despite all the comic book goofiness, he'd seen her as sort of a platonic ideal for all reporters, and one he'd quietly always wanted to emulate.

He'd told that to Renée one night a couple years after they'd gotten married. They'd been in bed, curled together after a particularly good day in the comforting dark of their room, and their sleepy conversation had meandered and flowed.

 _Does that make me Superman, then?_ she'd asked, the shadows hiding most of her face.

 _Of course,_ he'd said. _Who else but Superman could spend as much time in the sky as you?_

Koudelka shook off the memory. He didn't need this right now. He'd remarried, and was a different man now. He loved Beatriz, and Beatriz loved him. Whatever he was about to embark on, he did it for justice -- not some misguided attempt to bring Renée back.

The house was empty when he got home, thankfully. In his home office, he took down a box he hadn't opened in a good long while. There was a stack of papers inside and a small pile of flash drives. Business cards, post-it notes, and scraps of paper containing phone numbers and email addresses were tucked into a bulging envelope.

Koudelka took out his phone. The last time he'd made these same calls, he'd been both too emotional and too numb. His fingers had shook on the screen while everything felt dead inside. Now there was a steadiness in him brought on by both age and time.

After fifteen years, It was time to reopen the investigation into the death of Renée Minkowski.

\----

His first attempt was a complete failure. You would think that it would be easier to dig up the history of an ordinary human man than a top-secret, incorporeal, sentient supercomputer, but Dr. Hilbert was proving that hypothesis completely false.

Attempting to find sources that might have information on the elusive doctor was akin to blindly stumbling through a maze where each dead end contained a deceased friend or family member. Old news reports had referenced Dr. Hilbert's family, but there was no trace. Had anyone who ever knew this guy survived to the present day? According to Koudelka's research, it seemed the answer was no.

But Koudelka knew that Dr. Hilbert had been real -- at least in some sense of the word. He'd met the man at the same gala that he'd been introduced to Eiffel. He recalled the man he'd shook hands with: absent-minded, talkative, dedicated to science to nearly a comical degree. And then, at the strangest moments, when he was alone, seemed to be curiously empty.

Was the man an innocent victim? A pawn? A mastermind? But, no matter which track he took, Koudelka found nothing. Dr. Hilbert, it seemed, would remain a mystery.

Koudelka would have to move on to his next lead.

\----

Koudelka was almost done packing for his flight to New York City when there was the sound of movement downstairs, then Koudelka heard the voice of Amelia. Amelia was Beatriz's youngest child who was home from college on spring break.

"Do we have any laundry detergent left?" Amelia shouted up the stairs to Koudelka and Beatriz's shared bedroom.

"Have you checked bottom shelf in the hallway closet?" Koudelka yelled back.

There was a minute of silence, and then: "Thanks! Got it!" floated up the steps.

It had been strange getting used to children, at first. The house was suddenly full of noise and mess after years of just Koudelka and his thoughts.

He and Renée had discussed having kids several times. In fact, it had been the subject of one of their last arguments before she had left for her rotation on the _Hephaestus._ She'd said, 'let's talk about it when I get back,' but they were already at the age where the longer they waited, the harder it would be to have kids. Koudelka had accused her of avoiding the issue, and things had devolved from there. They had made up before the launch, but that horrible argument was still one of Koudelka's greatest regrets.

But he pushed down the memories again; he had a plane to catch.

\----

In the days and weeks after any tragedy that became a public spectacle, agencies zealously guard the private information of those involved -- if they know what's good for them. More than a decade after the tragedy, however, phones aren't ringing off the hooks anymore, and sometimes policies get a bit lax.

And, to no one's surprise, things loosen up even more when you have the right connections and grease the right palms. Koudelka accomplished both, and found himself sitting on a park bench in New York. with a small stack of folders on his lap. The top one was open.

He flipped though Anne's folder again. Eighteen years of age, lives with her mom and step-dad in Lubbock, Texas, part of the year and in New York at a prestigious academy for the deaf. She was due to graduate this next month.

And she was also the closest surviving relative to one Officer Douglas Eiffel. _Deceased_ , the file helpfully noted.

He sat back on the park bench and stretched his legs out, waiting for Anne to show up. Koudelka had actually met the man once. At a pre-launch mixer where all the crew and support staff and their families were supposed to get to know each other. The man had been pushing most of a tray of shrimp cocktail that was supposed to be for all of them onto his plate when he'd first been pointed out to Koudelka as the _Hephaestus_ ' communications officer. He'd been chatty, funny, a little annoying, and younger than Koudelka would have thought. Renée had taken a dislike to Eiffel instantly, but Koudelka hadn't minded him.

"Hi," a voice with a slightly strange accent said from behind him, interrupting his thoughts, "are you Mr. Koudelka?"

Koudelka stood and turned. There stood a girl -- well, a young woman, he supposed -- whose face matched the photo in his dossier, and who greatly resembled the man he had met at that gala so many years ago.

"Yes, but please call me Dominic." He stretched his hand out for a shake, and when she responded in kind the light glinted off of thin, metallic filaments adhered to her skin that stretched from her bicep down to the ends of each of her fingers. Each wire led back up to a band on her upper arm that contained a small, flat speaker.

"Nice to meet you," the girl signed to Koudelka, the English words emanating from the speaker in the armband. Koudelka had a feeling that it took some of the poetry and minutiae out of her words, but he was grateful she had brought it nonetheless -- he was fluent in several languages, but American Sign Language was not one of them. There was no need for a translator as he interviewed the daughter of a man that he had only met once, but who would have been Renée's constant companion in the time leading up to her death. It was a strange feeling; both of them brought together by the echoes of the same tragedy.

Koudelka started with the basics. He asked her a little about herself, her family, how she liked her school, if anyone strange had ever tried to contact her about Douglas Eiffel. He got the answers he expected, then:

"Did you know your father?" As Koudelka spoke, the words appeared on her phone screen.

She gave a little shrug that reminded Koudelka so much of his youngest step-daughter that he had to struggle against the sudden warmth that bloomed in his chest. "Sort of," she signed through the machine. "I was pretty young when the accident happened, and I suffered some memory loss as a result of the brain injury."

Koudelka had read up on the medical records that he'd (illegally) obtained, and they seemed to fit with what Anne was saying. He'd been surprised when he'd first seen them; the records were quite the laundry list of injuries: whiplash, contusions, broken bones, concussion, brain damage. Not to mention the two people in the other car. It was hard to square the image of the chatty, hapless man he'd met at the gala with the alcoholic father that had caused all this pain and suffering.

"I have some old letters that he sent me while he was in prison, and a few transmissions from the space station. But that was him talking _at_ me, you know? That's not really how you get to know someone -- it wasn't a conversation," Anne continued to sign. Koudelka nodded as she talked, and jotted down notes.

"But, I do have a few memories, I guess. Vague ones, from when I was little. I remember..." her hands paused in the air as Anne thought. "I remember that he was kind. I remember that he loved me."

All that Koudelka could think of to say seemed wrong. "I'm sure he did," he said feeling the inadequacy of the statement.

"It's funny that you happened to contact me now. I've been thinking about my dad a lot now that I've almost graduated. Wondering if he would have come to my graduation, if he would like my girlfriend, what he would think about my life now."

"I think any father would be proud of the woman you're becoming."

Anne nodded to herself. She wasn't crying, but maybe she was close. Koudelka shifted uncomfortably. 

Anne caught his arm. "I don't think he wanted to go," she signed. "I know that I didn't know him very well, but I've just always had that feeling."

Normally Koudelka wasn't one for mysterious and unexplainable 'feelings' but he himself had been operating on nothing more than hunches and emotions during this investigation that he stopped to consider it. Had Eiffel been forced into going to space? Renée hadn't been -- not at all -- but he couldn't rule out the possibility for the rest of the crew.

And then the interview was over. He watched as she packed up her things. Here they were; two people left behind in the aftermath of space travel, of mankind's slow, inexorable progression to the stars. Was she as bitter about it as he was in those first years, he wondered. He kept that last question inside.

"I'm not sure what you're writing," she signed once she'd slung her neon bag over her shoulder, "but, good luck."

\----

More long days of research, and calls, and thinking, and luck -- and then Koudelka was on another plane this time, this time headed to a small airport in Northern Michigan, just outside Marquette.

The world had mostly left the A.I. game behind -- or, at least artificial intelligence the way it had been imagined at the beginning of the century. Society had instead embraced a type of cold, empty intelligence. A machine that could reason, learn, and make the logical choices necessary to handle the ever-changing, information-heavy tasks that people assigned them to. But they had no personality, no emotions, no sense of self-preservation, and no true consciousness. All the advantages of a thinking machine with none of the ethical questions that came with creating a being with its own thoughts and desires.

But what was to be done with the prototype personality A.I.'s that already existed? They were expensive, and (despite some inquiries)many of the people who worked with them balked at permanent deactivation. So, most of them were shipped off to regional airports like this one, to live out the rest of their computing life expectancy planning routes for planes travelling places they will never see.

The room that his airport contact led him to was still and dim. Much of the light came from the multitude of indicator lights and touch screen displays that peppered the giant fixtures housing the processing power of the A.I. that ran the operations. Soft mechanical whirrs made up the ambient sound, punctuated by the occasional beeping monitor.

"Hello?" Koudelka said into the empty room, feeling deeply stupid.

"Hello," a voice said back promptly. Koudelka nearly jumped.

"Hi," Koudelka said unnecessarily, feeling a little flustered. He had no idea what part of the machine he should speak to. "I'm Dominic Koudelka, a reporter. Did they tell you I was coming."

"Yes," said the computer in a generic female voice. "You would like to ask me some questions." She sounded neither reluctant, nor excited.

Despite the youthful voice, Koudelka was left with the impression of extreme age. If he had to anthropomorphize her -- though all artificial intelligence experts warned against projecting human values on AIs -- the image an old woman filled his mind. A woman who had outlived most of the rest of her kind, and now wished to be left to her work and to sleep.

"That's right. I want to ask you about the A.I. mother program aboard the _Hephaestus_ \-- did you know it?"

"No," the A.I. said.

"But you were activated by Goddard Futuristics at the same facility at around the same time. Did they ever allow you contact with the _Hephaestus_ A.I.?"

"No."

Koudelka was deeply disappointed. He changed tack, and asked every question that he could think of that might lead him to more information on the _Hephaestus_ or it's mother program. But each question was answered in the negative. Finally, for a few long moments, the computer simply stopped responding.

"...Are you alright," Koudelka said to the room that suddenly felt very empty again.

"O-oh, please excuse me," it said with a slight stuttering glitch in the audio, apparently a little embarrassed -- or at least emulating that emotion quite well. "There are several dozen planes requesting recalculated routes due to a mass of unexpected thermals in the east. It can be a little taxing on my servers."

"That's alright," Koudelka said, making to stand up, there was nothing more he could learn here today. "Well, I have a long trip--"

"Wait," the A.I. said. There was another long pause, but Koudelka waited. "I didn't really know Hera, but I had always wanted to meet her. I was very sad to learn that she was gone. It still saddens me now."

"Hera?"

"That was the name of the mother program on board the _Hephaestus_."

"And what's your name?" Koudelka said, realizing with a strange creeping sensation that he had never asked.

"Aethra," the A.I. said simply.

"Thank you for answering my questions, Aethra," Koudelka said quietly. "I'm going to leave you now."

"Oh, it was no problem." the AI said gently. "I'm glad to get the chance to talk."

Koudelka still knew nothing about Hera, but perhaps it would please her to know that she was remembered, and mourned, in her own way by her own kind. When took his tablet from his bag and unlocked the screen on the flight home, his eyes caught on an icon that had never been there before. There, prominently placed on his home screen, was a program that was simply titled 'From Aethra.'

Koudelka opened it, and read.

\----

 

Rachel Young lived in a surprisingly simple home, for the head of a major company. The security system, however, was top-notch, and if he hadn't been fed inside information, breaking in undetected would have been impossible.

Koudelka found her on the couch in the living room. While she must have been surprised, she didn't show it. She just leaned back into the cushions and nursed her steaming mug of coffee.

"I heard you were poking around, Mr. Koudelka, asking about the _Hephaestus_ ," she said before he could speak. "I don't know what you expect to find here. Goddard Futuristics is a legitimate business, Mr. Koudelka. We're a publicly traded company, we have a board of directors, we have shareholders. Goddard Futuristics is no longer going on wild goose chases in distant solar systems."

And the thing was, Mr. Koudelka believed her. It made complete sense that the actuarial insurance sector that Goddard was currently dominating with a modified version of their impeccable A.I. algorithms would be much more profitable than whatever they had been doing in the Wolf 359 system. Goddard was likely very much on the straight and narrow.

But the present did not change the past, and the questions that had crowded his throat for fifteen long years needed to be answered.

"I need you to tell exactly what happened to the crew of the _Hephaestus_." The gun in his hand was currently pointed towards the floor, steady as a rock.

Rachel sighed, and put down her coffee. "No one, not even me, could tell you that."

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said."

Then something occurred to him. Something so horrible that his mind instantly shied away from it. He had to force the question out, dreading the answer.

" Renée's not... still alive up there?"

Rachel looked at him for several seconds, which seemed infinitely long to Koudelka. Then she shook her head, "We don't think so."

 _We don't_ think _so._

A surge of adrenaline. Koudelka could feel his breath start to get shaky. He reached inside himself for that numb, alert stillness he used to be able to call up in especially terrible moments in the field -- another muscle he hadn't stretched in a very long time. But it worked (at least temporarily) and the growing roar of his emotions was turned into background noise.

"What do you think happened to her?" he asked, voice steady.

"We believe an unexplained spatial anomaly abruptly caused the _Hephaestus'_ orbit to deteriorate until it fell into the sun."

Koudelka felt nothing. His fist tightened. He felt nothing. "So, that's it then? She and everybody else was pulled into the sun, incinerated, and now there's no evidence left that the _Hephaestus_ ever existed."

A microsecond's pause, then: "Yes," Rachel said firmly.

But -- god help him -- the same journalistic instincts that had served Koudelka all his life caught it. "There's something else," he said flatly.

For the first time, Rachel fidgeted. "It's possible that the star... may have not been a star."

Koudelka waited, not moving.

"It may have been a doorway."

Koudelka waited.

Then the words seemed to come out in a rush. Or what may have passed for a rush for the perpetually composed Rachel. "There were strange readings from Wolf 359 for so long: extremely unusual radiation, impossible broadcast echoes, unconfirmed reports of an unknown presence. The day that the _Hephaestus_ disappeared, all our instruments went haywire with complete nonsense readings. It was like the star turned inside out for a second. Our sensors never found any debris."

Koudelka looked at Rachel, across from him on the couch. The mug of coffee was back in her hand, there was a pair of shoes kicked off by the door, her refrigerator hummed quietly in the background. Rachel was here, living her life. If Koudelka hadn't shown up, today would have been a normal day.

 _Maybe I should kill her,_ the stray thought breezes through Koudelka's head. It's not an entirely unwelcome idea. This woman knew Renée, lied to her, set her up, and allowed her to die. Well, probably die.

Koudelka remembered Aethra, that strange computer, alone in a vast room. He thought of Anne Eiffel's braces glinting in the sun as she smiled.

"And Officer Douglas Eiffel? Or the A.I.?"

"Also on board the _Hephaestus_ when it made contact with the sun."

Koudelka pulled up the clearest memory he had of Eiffel again, that absurd man from the gala, talkative and funny and selfish. And that same man was likely the last human to see Renée alive. Had she held his hand at the end, as the station plummeted towards the sun? Had there been any comfort for Renée at all?

Koudelka abruptly turned and walked through the sliding glass door to Rachel's beautiful backyard. There were a couple clouds in the starry night sky, but none in the patch his gaze automatically turned towards. Funny, despite being such a close neighbor, relatively speaking, you couldn't even see Wolf 359 from Earth with the naked eye. But Koudelka knew its location, and he stared into the darkness between the stars, right where Wolf 359 should be.

 _I have a new life now,_ Koudelka thought, eyes on the stars. _I loved Renée, but she's gone, and that part of my life is over now. It's been over for a long time._

His eyes strained against the darkness for a good long while. He looked for something, _anything_. But there was no glimmer of light, no ship, no star, no Renée.

Koudelka went back to the house and slid open the sliding glass doors. Rachel was still sitting on the couch, and when she looked up, he fired two shots into her head.

After, Koudelka went upstairs and found the hidden documents right where Aethra said it would be.

It was a file cabinet. The old kind -- strictly for paper. 'If you want data to last, print it out' the words from a nameless former IT worker floated through his head. He flipped through the files. Greek words jump out at him -- _Hermes, Urania, Metioche,_ and so on. Each folder must contain its own human tragedy, but there was only one that Koudelka was searching for.

_Hephaestus._

\----

It was the small hours of the morning when Koudelka finally crept back into his house. It was quiet; Beatriz was asleep in the warm bed upstairs and Amelia had already gone back to college over a week ago. He didn't turn on the light in the study, just let the white light of the laptop illuminate his face and the shadows around him as he began to write.

It wasn't his best work. No first draft could be. But it would be the most important story he had ever put his byline on, and it flowed from his fingers in one long session. All that he had learned: about Goddard, about the United States Government, about the Hephaestus. About Renée. It was all there -- a masterpiece of investigative reporting.

But when he was done, he felt no triumph, just a welcome sense of emptiness. Scoured and clean. He sent of copy of the story to his former editor who still worked at the old paper. He posted another copy to his long-dormant blog, just in case.

That done, he sat for several long moments in the dim blue glow of his background screen. It took all of his will, but Koudelka rose from the chair and turned off his phone. He unplugged his router. After a moment, he decided to put the chain lock on the door and disable the doorbell too. He was just so tired, all he wanted to do was sink into bed and sleep for a year.

Beatriz was warm when he slid in next to her under the covers. She stirred at the disturbance, and he pressed in close behind her, his front to her back.

"Long day at work?" she mumbled, more than half asleep.

"Yes," he said against her hair after a moment. Beatriz was probably already asleep again. "But I'm home now."


End file.
